


Blues Angel

by Apetslife



Category: Angel: the Series
Genre: M/M, UST
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-05
Updated: 2011-04-05
Packaged: 2017-10-17 15:39:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 548
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/178377
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Apetslife/pseuds/Apetslife
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Freedom's just another word for all that you've left behind.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Blues Angel

There's rain hammering down on the windowsill, and the sound is sharp  
and immediate and Lindsey can pretend it's a girl with a tambourine,  
playing along with his guitar. Low, slow rumble of thunder, and it's  
the bass drum, singing with him now. Slow, raunchy G to A to C...oh  
god he'd missed this.

Downbeat into a twelve bar blues in A, because that's what he started  
with, back when he was twelve with a five dollar guitar and the world  
at his feet. That sweet familiar slide, and he's Blind Gary Davis,  
he's Mississippi John Hurt, he's deep in the sound and the feel and  
the swing in his bones that lets him dream for just a minute of  
cottonfields and summer and meeting with that boy in the almost-  
harvested corn, that boy who'd never told him his name.

Grind up to a painful G, and his throat is vibrating with the need to  
sing, the need to pour it all out into the music, the need for  
someone to hear, someone to know what's in his soul. He hums, deep  
down, and it's a desperate needing sound, and he lets it fly with the  
notes from his fingers, with the sound of the rain. All the world's  
regret, here in a song. Here in the dust on his boots, the  
technicolor memories of Los Angeles that won't let him sleep, the  
pain in his voice, the dreams in his eyes. The ache in his heart.  
The blues.

Long, slow B minor, to A minor, to C, and it sounds like Angel Of  
Harlem, and he lets his fingers sweep into it, because isn't U2 just  
a blues band prettied up for the masses? Three, four, five hard  
chords, and thank you, Edge, because the anger's coming out now,  
smothering the pain, reminding him that this is not his fault. He  
slams a chord, listens to it echo. Not. His. Fault. Only it is, and  
in the dying, ringing sound his head dips down, and he sighs. And  
he's back to the blues, the singing blues, the blues that speak of  
the country and the land that will remain long after he is gone, the  
blues that know all about morality, all about pain and fear and love  
and loss and redemption. Can he be redeemed?

E chord now, pure and perfect and waiting to be built upon. Like his  
life, now, a knapsack and a guitar and this hotel room, sitting empty  
until he'd filled it with music. E again, because when he plays it  
he thinks of things, things like Darla, pale and slender and doomed,  
and Angel, dark and solid. Things he'd wanted. Things he'd thought  
he'd be able to forget, and thank you again, U2, for writing that  
fucking song on the last album, because yes he knows there are many  
things that he can't leave behind. Downstroke to A, and it's Bobbie  
McGee, and isn't he just about busted flat in Baton Rouge? Pretty  
close. And yeah, Angel's just another word for nothing left to lose.

Lindsey sits up. Lets himself look out the window at the rain, at the  
endless flatness of the Panhandle. Hums again. Ya da dum, ya da da  
dum. Hey, hey, hey. Freedom.

[the end]


End file.
